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I. Darwinism
Two scientists can hardly be named who have, in the second half of the 19th century, dominated the
human mind to a greater degree than Darwin and Marx. Their teachings revolutionized the
conception that the great masses had about the world. For decades their names have been on the
tongues of everybody, and their teachings have become the central point of the mental struggles
which accompany the social struggles of today. The cause of this lies primarily in the highly
scientific contents of their teachings.
The scientific importance of Marxism as well as of Darwinism consists in their following out the
theory of evolution, the one upon the domain of the organic world, of things animate; the other,
upon the domain of society. This theory of evolution, however, was in no way new, it had its
advocates before Darwin and Marx; the philosopher, Hegel, even made it the central point of his
philosophy. It is, therefore, necessary to observe closely what were the achievements of Darwin and
Marx in this domain.
The theory that plants and animals have developed one from another is met with first in the
nineteenth century. Formerly the question, “Whence come all these thousands and hundreds of
thousands of different kinds of plants and animals that we know?", was answered: “At the time of
creation God created them all, each after its kind." This primitive theory was in conformity with
experience had and with the best information about the past that was available. According to
available information, all known plants and animals have always been the same. Scientifically, this
experience was thus expressed, “All kinds are invariable because the parents transmit their
characteristics to their children.”
There were, however, some peculiarities among plants and animals which gradually forced a
different conception to be entertained. They so nicely let themselves be arranged into a system
which was first set up by the Swedish scientist Linnaeus. According to this system, the animals are
divided into phyla, which are divided into classes, classes into orders, orders into families, families
into genera, each of which contain a few species. The more semblance there is in their
characteristics, the nearer they stand towards each other in this system, and the smaller is the group
to which they belong. All the animals classed as mammalian show the same general characteristics
in their bodily frame. The herbivorous animals, and carnivorous animals, and monkeys, each of
which belongs to a different order, are again differentiated. Bears, dogs, and cats, all of which are
carnivorous animals, have much more in common in bodily form than they have with horses or
monkeys. This conformity is still more obvious when we examine varieties of the same species; the
cat, tiger and lion resemble each other in many respects where they differ from dogs and bears. If
we turn from the class of mammals to other classes, such as birds or fishes, we find greater
differences between classes than we find within a class. There still persists, however, a semblance in
the formation of the body, the skeleton and the nervous system. These features first disappear when
we turn from this main division, which embraces all the vertebrates, and go to the molluscs (soft
bodied animals) or to the polyps.
The entire animal world may thus be arranged into divisions and subdivisions. Had every different
kind of animal been created entirely independent of all the others, there would be no reason why
such orders should exist. There would be no reason why there should not be mammals having six
paws. We would have to assume, then, that at the time of creation, God had taken Linnaeus’ system
as a plan and created everything according to this plan. Happily we have another way of accounting
for it. The likeness in the construction of the body may be due to a real family relationship.
According to this conception, the conformity of peculiarities show how near or remote the
relationship is, just as the resemblance between brothers and sisters is greater than between remote
relatives. The animal classes were, therefore, not created individually, but descended one from
another. They form one trunk that started with simple foundations and which has continually
developed; the last and thin twigs are our present existing kinds. All species of cats descend from a
primitive cat, which together with the primitive dog and the primitive bear, is the descendant of
some primitive type of carnivorous animal. The primitive carnivorous animal, the primitive hoofed
animal and the primitive monkey have descended from some primitive mammal, etc.
This theory of descent was advocated by Lamarck and by Geoffrey St. Hilaire. It did not, however,
meet with general approval. These naturalists could not prove the correctness of this theory and,
therefore, it remained only a hypothesis, a mere assumption. When Darwin came, however, with his
main book, The Origin of Species struck like a thunderbolt; his theory of evolution was immediately
accepted as a strongly proved truth. Since then the theory of evolution has become inseparable from
Darwin’s name. Why so?
This was partly due to the fact that through experience ever more material was accumulated which
went to support this theory. Animals were found which could not very well be placed into the
classification such as oviparous mammals (that is, animals which lay eggs and nourish their
offspring from their breast. - Translator) fishes having lungs, and invertebrate animals. The theory
of descent claimed that these are simply the remnants of the transition between the main groups.
Excavations have revealed fossil remains which looked different from animals living now. These
remains have partly proved to be the primitive forms of our animals, and that the primitive animals
have gradually developed to existing ones. Then the theory of cells was formed; every plant, every
animal, consists of millions of cells and has been developed by incessant division and
differentiation of single cells. Having gone so far, the thought that the highest organisms have
descended from primitive beings having but a single cell, could not appear as strange.
All these new experiences could not, however, raise the theory to a strongly proved truth. The best
proof for the correctness of this theory would have been to have an actual transformation from one
animal kind to another take place before our eyes, so that we could observe it. But this is
impossible. How then is it at all possible to prove that animal forms are really changing into new
forms? This can be done by showing the cause, the propelling force of such development. This
Darwin did. Darwin discovered the mechanism of animal development, and in doing so he showed
that under certain conditions some animal kinds will necessarily develop into other animal-kinds.
We will now make clear this mechanism.
Its main foundation is the nature of transmission, the fact that parents transmit their peculiarities to
children, but that at the same time the children diverge from their parents in some respects and also
differ from each other. It is for this reason that animals of the same kind are not all alike, but differ
in all directions from the average type. Without this so-called variation it would be wholly
impossible for one animal species to develop into another. All that is necessary for the formation of
a new species is that the divergence from the central type become greater and that it goes on in the
same direction until this divergence has become so great that the new animal no longer resembles
the one from which it descended. But where is that force that could call forth the ever growing
variation in the same direction?
Lamarck declared that this was owing to the usage and much exercise of certain organs; that, owing
to the continuous exercise of certain organs, these become ever more perfected. Just as the muscles
of men’s legs get strong from running much, in the same way the lion acquired its powerful paws
and the hare its speedy legs. In the same way the giraffes got their long necks because in order to
reach the tree leaves, which they ate, their necks were stretched so that a short-necked animal
developed to the long-necked giraffe. To many this explanation was incredible and it could not
account for the fact that the frog should have such a green color which served him as a good
protecting color.
To solve the same question, Darwin turned to another line of experience. The animal breeder and
the gardener are able to raise artificially new races and varieties. When a gardener wants to raise
from a certain plant a variety having large blossoms, all he has to do is to kill before maturity all
those plants having small blossoms and preserve those having large ones. If he repeats this for a few
years in succession, the blossoms will be ever larger, because each new generation resembles its
predecessor, and our gardener, having always picked out the largest of the large for the purpose of
propagation, succeeds in raising a plant with very large blossoms. Through such action, done
sometimes deliberately and sometimes accidentally, people have raised a great number of races of
our domesticated animals which differ from their original form much more than the wild kinds
differ from each other.
If we should ask an animal-breeder to raise a long-necked animal from a short-necked one, it would
not appear to him an impossibility. All he would have to do would be to choose those having partly
longer necks, have them inter-bred, kill the young ones having narrow necks and again have the
long-necked inter-breed. If he repeated this at every new generation the result would be that the
neck would ever become longer and he would get an animal resembling the giraffe.
This result is achieved because there is a definite will with a definite object, which, to raise a certain
variety, chooses certain animals. In nature there is no such will, and all the deviations must again be
straightened out by interbreeding, so that it is impossible for an animal to keep on departing from
the original stock and keep going in the same direction until it becomes an entirely different species.
Where then, is that power in nature that chooses the animals just as the breeder does?
Darwin pondered this problem long before he found its solution in the “struggle for existence.” In
this theory we have a reflex of the productive system of the time in which Darwin lived, because it
was the capitalist competitive struggle which served him as a picture for the struggle for existence
prevailing in nature. It was not through his own observation that this solution presented itself to
him. It came to him by his reading the works of the economist Malthus. Malthus tried to explain
that in our bourgeois world there is so much misery and starvation and privation because population
increases much more rapidly than the existing means of subsistence. There is not enough food for
all; people must therefore struggle with each other for their existence, and many must go down in
this struggle. By this theory capitalist competition as well as the misery existing were declared as an
unavoidable natural law. In his autobiography Darwin declares that it was Malthus’ book which
made him think about the struggle for existence.
“In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to
read for amusement Malthus on population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence which everywhere goes on from long continuous observation of the habits of animals and
plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be
preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new
species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work.”
It is a fact that the increase in the birth of animals is greater than the existing food permits of
sustaining. There is no exception to the rule that all organic beings tend to increase so rapidly that
our earth would be overrun very soon by the offspring of a single pair, were these not destroyed. It
is for this reason that a struggle for existence must arise. Every animal tries to live, does its best to
eat, and seeks to avoid being eaten by others. With its particular peculiarities and weapons it
struggles against the entire antagonistic world, against animals, cold, heat, dryness, inundations, and
other natural occurrences that may threaten to destroy it. Above all, it struggles with the animals of
its own kind, who live in the same way, have the same peculiarities, use the same weapons and live
by the same nourishment. This struggle is not a direct one; the hare does not struggle directly with
the hare, nor the lion with the lion - unless it is a struggle for the female - but it is a struggle for
existence, a race, a competitive struggle. All of them can not reach a grown-up age; most of them
are destroyed, and only those who win the race remain. But which are the ones to win in the race?
Those which, through their peculiarities, through their bodily structures are best able to find food or
to escape an enemy; in other words, those which are best adapted to existing conditions will
survive. “Because there are ever more individuals born than can remain alive, the struggle as to
which shall remain alive must start again and that creature that has some advantage over the others
will survive, but as these diverging peculiarities are transmitted to the new generations, nature itself
does the choosing, and a new generation will arise having changed peculiarities.”
Here we have another application for the origin of the giraffe. When grass does not grow in some
places, the animals must nourish themselves on tree leaves, and all those whose necks are too short
to reach these leaves must perish. In nature itself there is selection, and nature selects only those
having long necks. In conformity with the selection done by the animal breeder, Darwin called this
process “natural selection.”
This process must necessarily produce new species. Because too many are born of a certain species,
more than the existing food supply can sustain, they are forever trying to spread over a larger area.
In order to procure their food, those living in the woods go to the plain, those living on the soil go
into the water, and those living on the ground climb on trees. Under these new conditions
divergence is necessary. These divergencies are increased, and from the old species a new one
develops. This continuous movement of existing species branching out into new relations results in
these thousands of different animals changing still more.
While the Darwinian theory explains thus the general descent of the animals, their transmutation
and formation out of primitive beings, it explains, at the same time, the wonderful conformity
throughout nature. Formerly this wonderful conformity could only be explained through the wise
superintending care of God. Now, however, this natural descent is clearly understood. For this
conformity is nothing else than the adaptation to the means of life. Every animal and every plant is
exactly adapted to existing circumstances, for all those whose build is less conformable are less
adapted and are exterminated in the struggle for existence. The green-frog, having descended from
the brown-frog, must preserve its protecting color, for all those that deviate from this color are
sooner found by the enemies and destroyed or find greater difficulty in obtaining their food and
must perish.
It was thus that Darwin showed us, for the first time, that new species continually formed out of old
ones. The theory of descent, which until then was merely a presumptive inference of many
phenomena that could not be explained well in any other way, gained the certainty of an absolute
inference of definite forces that could be proved. In this lies the main reason that this theory had so
quickly dominated the scientific discussions and public attention.
II. Marxism
If we turn to Marxism we immediately see a great conformity with Darwinism. As with Darwin, the
scientific importance of Marx’s work consists in this, that he discovered the propelling force, the
cause of social development. He did not have to prove that such a development was taking place;
every one knew that from the most primitive times new social forms ever supplanted older, but the
causes and aims of this development were unknown.
In his theory Marx started with the information at hand in his time. The great political revolution
that gave Europe the aspect it had, the French Revolution, was known to everyone to have been a
struggle for supremacy, waged by the bourgeois against nobility and royalty. After this struggle new
class struggles originated. The struggle carried on in England by the manufacturing capitalists
against the landowners dominated politics; at the same time the working class revolted against the
bourgeoisie. What were all these classes? Wherein did they differ from each other? Marx proved
that these class distinctions were owing to the various functions each one played in the productive
process. It is in the productive process that classes have their origin, and it is this process which
determines to what class one belongs. Production is nothing else than the social labor process by
which men obtain their means of subsistence from nature. It is the production of the material
necessities of life that forms the main structure of society and that determines the political relations
and social struggles.
The methods of production have continuously changed with the progress of time. Whence came
these changes? The manner of labor and the productive relationship depend upon the tools with
which people work, upon the development of technique and upon the means of production in
general. Because in the Middle Ages people worked with crude tools, while now they work with
gigantic machinery, we had at that time small trade and feudalism, while now we have capitalism; it
is also for this reason that at that time the feudal nobility and the small bourgeoisie were the most
important classes, while now it is the bourgeoisie and the proletarians which are the classes.
It is the development of tools, of these technical aids which men direct, which is the main cause, the
propelling force of all social development. It is self-understood that the people are ever trying to
improve these tools so that their labor be easier and more productive, and the practice they acquire
in using these tools, leads their thoughts upon further improvements. Owing to this development, a
slow or quick progress of technique takes place, which at the same time changes the social forms of
labor. This leads to new class relations, new social institutions and new classes. At the same time
social, i. e., political struggles arise. Those classes predominating under the old process of
production try to preserve artificially their institutions, while the rising classes try to promote the
new process of production; and by waging the class struggles against the ruling class and by
conquering them they pave the way for the further unhindered development of technique.
Thus the Marxian theory disclosed the propelling force and the mechanism of social development.
In doing this it has proved that history is not something irregular, and that the various social systems
are not the result of chance or haphazard events, but that there is a regular development in a definite
direction. In doing this it was also proved that social development does not cease with our system,
because technique continually develops.
Thus, both teachings, the teachings of Darwin and of Marx, the one in the domain of the organic
world and the other upon the field of human society, raised the theory of evolution to a positive
science.
In doing this they made the theory of evolution acceptable to the masses as the basic conception of
social and biological development.